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Major drive to detoxify Lanka begins today
View(s):Government today will take a major step towards a gradual turn around from the use of imported agrochemicals, to locally produced organic and bio fertilizers. The programme for a Vasa Visa Nethi’Ratak — a mission to make Sri Lanka free of poisonous agrochemicals and thereby, free of poisoned or polluted food including rice, vegetables and fruits — will be officially launched today, with a three-day exhibition and sale of organically produced food items.
The Vasa Visa Nethi Ratak project was one of the main promises made during the election campaign which brought President Maithripala Sirisena and the National Unity Government to office on January 8, last year.The three-day exhibition and sale will be held from March 6-8 at the BMICH, from 10 am to 9 pm daily. It has been organised by the Presidential Secretariat and the Ministry of Agriculture. The Organisers said there would be about 350 stalls selling organically grown native rice, other grains, vegetables and fruit at affordable prices.
At stall No. 215, the Oblate Mission Services Centre will sell organic manure, pure cow dung obtained from villages in Kuchcheveli in the Trincomalee district and Buttala in the Moneragala district. The cow dung manure — heated, sterilised, powdered and packed — will be sold at Rs 100 per kg packet and the proceeds will go to improve the livelihood of the villagers.One of the highlights of this three-day BMICH programme will be an international seminar on the theme Vasa Visa Nethi Ratak. President Sirisena will preside at this seminar to be attended by scientists of the Agricultural Research Officers’ Association, more than 5,000 farmer community leaders islandwide and international agro-science specialists. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, as the head of the Cabinet’s Committee on Economic Management, will be the chief guest at the opening of the exhibition and sale today.
Parliamentarian Ven. Athuraliye Rathana Thera, playing an active role in this mission, said that, for the past few years, he and other members of the ‘Vasa Visa Nethi’ movement had conducted awareness and education programmes among hundreds of farmers.
As a result, about 50,000 acres of land had now been cultivated with paddy and other crops, without the use of chemical fertilizers, weedicides or pesticides. He said that, within three years, they hoped to make tens of thousands of farmers aware of the dangers of poisoning the spoil and even the ground water, through the excessive use of expensive agrochemicals.
According to Presidential Secretary P.B. Abeykoon, the total amount of foreign exchange spent in importing food to Sri Lanka is about Rs 400 billion annually. Of this, Rs. 60 billion is for sugar and Rs 50 billion for powdered milk. Sri Lanka imports about Rs 80 billion worth of agro-toxins every year.
In a statement issued in connection with the launch of the programme, ‘A wholesome agriculture – a healthy population – a toxin-free nation,’ Mr Abeykoon said diabetes and other Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs) had reached pandemic proportions in Sri Lanka. Due to the injecting of hormones into meat products including chicken, girls as young as six or seven are attaining puberty at an alarming rate, while childhood obesity is becoming a bellyful.